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Where is the news in Pgh? only on WMBS and WISR I think.

T

thefalcon

I just woke up to Hank Baughman with the news on wjas, mr shumway on kdka and I believe the news departments in pittsburgh are phoning in the news casts. don bardon, the dentist who fought with his wife, this stuff has been going on for hundreds of years, rodger clemins may have sex with a country star 20 years ago, we think there may be gangs in woodland hills, (get to the heart of the story) hank had children in china being sold into slavery, reverend wright, is that all you've got. I have to bring out my little walkman and tune in 590 again and try to get 680.. it's hard in pgh because of the new 660. 590 am has news.. weither it's rip and read from the paper it's news. not yellow journalism. kdka and kqv.. please..there have got to be more stories than the same five over and over again. doctor wecht, the presidential campaign, maybe in two days we get the updates to the stories. like last week on CNBC they reported that new housing and or housing was up 3.9% in our area of the united states. the restof the country is down. both wall street journal report and ap just reports that the figures are down. no one reports that we are doing better. right now carol finelli is talking with bogie about rev wright and the black church. please let's do journalism. new business coming to pittsburgh.

if everyone keeps leading the news and commercials with "in these bad economic times" I know they are bad. I am in the same boat as everyone else. my mom told me that during WWII FDR urged hollywood to make some positive movies and things to keep the country hanging in there. are we so desperate for ratings that we are waiting for the next OJ at the expense of the american family and more importantly we are lowering the value of the dollar. scaring people to spend a penny.forgeting about what is really going on in the world.

I am not talking about the old happy news format that was on tv in the 1970's.. just real news. I am finding these stories buried in the newspaper and most of my younger friends don't read the newspaper and now I don't watch the news on tv.. because it's all the same. come on radio.... you can do it!
please burn my green carbon footprint and let's ask why murials are being painted on pgh buildings when people are starving, seniors and others are struggling as caregivers with little help in site.

why did that poor man with two handicapped sons kill his entire family two years ago when his wife got ill
and he felt he had no alternative . why do children like taylor coles get gunned down eating french fries at a sandwich shop in homewood. and we are worried about our carbon footprint. let's make the fountain pink for ribbon day.. but no selinium or other suppliments to protect women to try and prevent breast cancer. that's journalism!...quit only interviewing newsmakers who have an informercial show on your station. sorry..time for me to go to sleep now.. nite nite.
 
thefalcon said:
I just woke up to Hank Baughman with the news on wjas, mr shumway on kdka and I believe the news departments in pittsburgh are phoning in the news casts. don bardon, the dentist who fought with his wife, this stuff has been going on for hundreds of years, rodger clemins may have sex with a country star 20 years ago, we think there may be gangs in woodland hills, (get to the heart of the story) hank had children in china being sold into slavery, reverend wright, is that all you've got. I have to bring out my little walkman and tune in 590 again and try to get 680.. it's hard in pgh because of the new 660. 590 am has news.. weither it's rip and read from the paper it's news. not yellow journalism. kdka and kqv.. please..there have got to be more stories than the same five over and over again. doctor wecht, the presidential campaign, maybe in two days we get the updates to the stories. like last week on CNBC they reported that new housing and or housing was up 3.9% in our area of the united states. the restof the country is down. both wall street journal report and ap just reports that the figures are down. no one reports that we are doing better. right now carol finelli is talking with bogie about rev wright and the black church. please let's do journalism. new business coming to pittsburgh.

if everyone keeps leading the news and commercials with "in these bad economic times" I know they are bad. I am in the same boat as everyone else. my mom told me that during WWII FDR urged hollywood to make some positive movies and things to keep the country hanging in there. are we so desperate for ratings that we are waiting for the next OJ at the expense of the american family and more importantly we are lowering the value of the dollar. scaring people to spend a penny.forgeting about what is really going on in the world.

I am not talking about the old happy news format that was on tv in the 1970's.. just real news. I am finding these stories buried in the newspaper and most of my younger friends don't read the newspaper and now I don't watch the news on tv.. because it's all the same. come on radio.... you can do it!
please burn my green carbon footprint and let's ask why murials are being painted on pgh buildings when people are starving, seniors and others are struggling as caregivers with little help in site.

why did that poor man with two handicapped sons kill his entire family two years ago when his wife got ill
and he felt he had no alternative . why do children like taylor coles get gunned down eating french fries at a sandwich shop in homewood. and we are worried about our carbon footprint. let's make the fountain pink for ribbon day.. but no selinium or other suppliments to protect women to try and prevent breast cancer. that's journalism!...quit only interviewing newsmakers who have an informercial show on your station. sorry..time for me to go to sleep now.. nite nite.
Click to expand...

Falcon:

For starters, thank you for mentioning our AM 680 WISR. We're proud of the job we do and are always striving to do better.

What sets us apart is that we air news that many stations have forgotten about. We cover the regular meeting beat, and we bring back sound from those meetings, we go out and cover the occasional structure fire, any traffic accidents that necessitate a road closure, we get that on the air, and I'm seen in the Butler County Courthouse so often that a lot of people think I work there. :D In fact, I invite you to check out our website: http://www.insidebutlercounty.com.

Our website just won a PAB award for its news content. When I go out and cover a fire, I not only bring back sound, but a picture to go along with it. We don't use a wire service, because we feel that our listening audience wants to hear more local news than from Pittsburgh or that area. We do have Radio PA that gives us stuff from Harrisburg, and that's enough.
 
Its all about the money. News is very expensive to do right in a big market and most of the ownership groups just can't justify the expense to themselves when they are losing boatloads of money as it is.
 
I've never listened to WISR but I am sure they have the right idea. I spent time in PGH back in the late 80's...early 90's when KD had a real news department. Not that their current people don't have talent...they do...but they are short on people and shorter on experience.

Unfortuantely they are not alone and it is the classic chicken/egg problem. Coverning news csots money. If you want to out and cover meetings you need warm bodies. In a market the size of Pittsburgh you can't do a CREDIBLE job with less than 8 or 9 and realistically you need a dozen. In reporters and anchors alone that is $750,000 and that doesn't include wire, computers, cars, equipment, etc..

You can get by with less...and stations have thanks to bean counting coporate owners, but people look for their news elsewhere. Pittsburgh is an aging and shrinking market but it is still quite viable if someone would actually spend money.

Good luck on that score.
 
The problem is that TV stations don't want ot spend the money either. There's a real possibility that local news as we know it will barely exist in another 10 years.
 
Who knows what will happen in 10 years, but right now local news does very well for local TV stations. That's why KDKA-TV has stretched a half hour's worth of stories into three hours every evening and why everyone starts at 5 a.m. leading up to the network morning shows.

Getting back to radio, KDKA certainly had more local newscasts in the old days, but I don't know how much they really covered. They would have one, maybe two people, on the street during the day, much like they do now. They certainly didn't have a dozen newspeople in the '70s. Let's not kid ourselves -- the main source for news on KDKA, then and now, was the morning paper.

BTW, I'm told that KQV has reduced its weekend morning news content, at least in the last week or two.
 
Just to clarify...you do not need a dozen on the street...but you do need AT LEAST 18 hours worth of newscasters, plus weekends and 3-4 reporters a day on the street.

I can tell you ALL news stations use newspapers as part of the MIX of sources for their news, just as newspapers use broadcast to tell them what is going on NOW so they can sometimes do a 2nd day story.

In Tamp, a the newspaper and TV station share the same building and resoruces. It works quite well.
 
KD's news department in the late 70s was in excess of 20 people. There were at least two people in the radio newsroom 24/7. Nights, weekends, holidays were all covered.

It wasn't unusual in those days even for Top 40 stations to have five and six person news operations. Back then the FCC demanded it and advertisers were more than willing to pay for it.

P.S. Local TV news isn't going away. Its a cash cow when done right these days as well as a branding and identity statement. The product is getting watered down by going to two and three hour news blocks with the same staff but its making more money than any syndicated show could.
 
The lights went out in KDKA radio's newsroom as soon as the midnight newscast ended in the '70s. The next live newscast was at 6 a.m., later moved up to 5 a.m. It was not 24/7. The only people in the station after midnight on weeknights were the overnight talk host, the producer and an engineer.

On weeknights there was one person in the newsroom (usually John Haidar) after "90 to 6" ended until midnight.
 
Stations had overnight writers in those days. You couldn't take the chance that something would happen in town from midnight to 3:30 when the morning crew arrived. Stations actually competed back then with their news product and didn't consider a three minute newscast with one local story it stole off of the TV folks as legit.
 
KDKA had no overnight writer in the early to mid '70s. The newsroom was dark from midnight until the morning crew arrived after 4. They may have competed, but they didn't compete at 3 a.m.
 
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